The Kaiser Family Foundation’s much ballyhooed annual health care cost survey may be flawed, but it might prove that new products in the health care market, specifically consumer-driven plans, are forcing health insurers to lower their premiums.

HR executives often talk about the need to be strategic business partners within their organizations, but Linda Burkhart found it was her background as an HR generalist that helped get her company through a private equity buyout.

The private equity boom may have peaked, but one of its legacies is that investors recognize the value of human resources execs who know their financials and can help overhaul the workforce, revamp compensation and act as a mediator between unions and the company’s new owners.

With his rich severance package, former Home Depot exec Dennis Donovan is, not unexpectedly, the highest paid HR leader of fiscal 2006. More surprisingly in Workforce Management 's fourth annual list of the highest-paid human resource leaders is how many smaller companies are paying their people chiefs top dollar. And the pay is increasingly being based on performance.

The list of the 30 top-paid HR executives of 2006 presents a lesson that others in the field would be wise to heed: Don’t promise large severance packages that might make your company stand out from the pack.

A quintet of 2006's highest-paid HR leaders discuss how they are confronting myriad talent management challenges as well as obstacles to being viewed by their organizations as strategic business partners.